Rough Draft
by jenni3penny
Summary: "They're more than the sum of their opening chapters, but he always assumes the ending will break him and so he keeps them middling, keeps them re-reading the same goddamn paragraph over and again." Callian, by way of book writing.


She wakes one night when it's still night but near enough to morning that her body is screaming aches and rages at her for having fallen into a near all-night nap on her office couch. And she's not entirely sure what's woken her because, though he's in her office and slumped at her desk, he's obviously been there awhile. The slack of his jacket back on her chair is long rumpled and forgotten. He seems comfortably shrouded in the meek light from her desk lamp, the rest of the office dark. His shoulders are hunched forward and tight and the fingers of his left hand are rhythmically rubbing his scalp, distracted by their own manic repetition.

That little habit of his swings a full force sledgehammer into her chest that forces her to face how very much she's come to adore all his little idiosyncrasies.

One that heavily reminds her what Cal Lightman looks like when all remnants of his ego have deflated down around him and he is merely a human funnel for the glorious mania of his own brain.

What he looks like is devilishly goddamn handsome, that's what. In all his scruffed but compactly strong glory. Mussed shirt-sleeves rolled up to give her a slim sight of inking and a stubble that she knows would red-rash her up. There's something so infinitely and subtly beautiful in him when he is only allowing himself to selflessly serve as live conduit for his own brilliance... it makes her want to just bury her face in the stretch of his neck as he iconically cocks his head farther to one side.

Because his left hand is digging into his hair, spiking it comically and his right hand is busy doing something that makes a settled sigh ratchet on her lungs... he's writing.

And he's been doing so awhile, obviously. A long while wherein she's been curled awkwardly asleep on her own couch, with her shirt half baring cleavage that he doesn't even seem to notice – which is a sweet surprise to her - because Cal rarely gives up the chance to be _supposedly_ lecherous, not if he thinks it'll get a rise or reaction out of her. Not if he thinks it'll hold her attention to his eyes or mouth so that he can repeatedly tell her something without telling her anything at all.

But he can't make implications when he's scratching away at something with one of her favorite pens, so tightly focused as he uses the backs of the crisply boring memos she's printed for the next morning's budget meeting.

He's near out of copies, though.

Which means he's probably already gone through about twenty of them.

"How long?" she asks quietly, shifting her legs as she drags her skirt farther toward her knees instead of half ridden up her thighs.

"Couple hours." His face pinches at the interruption but he curbs the response so quickly, tamps it down as his head rises a slight fraction and he lets a lingering glance go over her legs. "Didn't mean to wake you."

His eyes are darker than she'd expected, the usual mix of colors seeming sharp sharded as he keeps his head hooded down but raises his eyes up the entire length of her. It would seem predatory, that look... if he didn't end it with a sway of his head to the left and a sigh passing his lips like he's accidentally seen the last few pages of a book and knows the ending while his thoughts and heart are still somewhere in the middle.

He always tries reading her like she's his favorite dog-eared and spine-worn book – and maybe that's the real reasoning for his supposed blindness when it comes to her.

Maybe it's his unquestionable knowledge of her lines and length and (self imposed) binding that make him think he can't find the true premise of _them_. He's assuming he already knows the ending and she's fairly sure that he's incorrect in that egotistical supposition. She's fairly sure the damn thing hasn't even been written yet, not the later chapters anyhow – a bit like the loose lines he seems to finally be scribbling off on the backs of her previously pristine paperwork.

They're more than the sum of their opening chapters, but he always assumes the ending will break him and so he keeps them middling, keeps them re-reading the same goddamn paragraph over and again.

"You didn't, I don't think. I'm half numb," she explains as she shifts back comfortably into the cushions, nestling back into their warmth under the way he's watching her. It's not predatory after all, not really. It's searching and paused, waiting for a continuation. Like he's been siphoning her stillness and turning it into a muted muse. "Don't you have your own office?"

The disgusted look that passes his face as he grumpily crowds back down over the papers says it all. Tells her, indiscriminately, that he and his office aren't pairing well – not when it comes to writing. "Yours has fewer expectations though, doesn't it?"

"While I'm asleep? Most definitely," Gill quips back with a sleepy smile, watches his head perk up a little even while his eyes are scanning the last of what he's written.

"Go back to sleep?" The plead in his tone is quiet but resolved, honest and surprisingly vulnerable as he finally blinks back up at her. "Please, darling?"

She cannot find a reason, beyond aching muscles and bones, not to accommodate his request.

Because she doesn't _want_ to find one, not because there aren't plenty of them.

She tugs the throw blanket from the back of the couch and curls it onto her, notes the way his entire body folds forward a little as he hawkishly watches the movement. "There's blank paper in the copier, you know?"

"Can make y'new ones of these."

"I'm just..." He's avoiding looking at her again as she speaks, intentionally keeping his eyes from how she stretches farther into the cushions and grumps a little noise into the pillow that she's shifting under her head, "for when you run out."

"Please?" His eyes are closed and he's holding himself at her desk as though he cannot physically allow himself to let go of it – because if he lets go of the edge he'll have lost the next line and find himself laid down beside her. "Sleep?"

* * *

"Foster."

He sounds like a child on Christmas morning, stage whispering and excitable.

And she's not nearly awake enough to understand why his mouth is hazing just along her cheekbone but she's enjoying the lulling and affectionate heat of it.

"Gill." His lips rub closer to her ear and she can feel a crackling start down her lower spine as he tucks a messy stack of papers between their pressing. "Read this."

"Cal - "

"Please?" He pouts it at her, suddenly very still and close - suddenly studying her like he's never actually seen her eyes so sleepy and hazed.

She blinks impenetrable patience as she turns her head closer, nears her lips to his and just nearly smirks into his excitement. "Ask me again."

"Please read this, Gill?"

* * *

"Not sure I can do this, my love."

Her head tips in consideration and she catches him watching the length of her lashes as she slowly blinks and then shrugs farther into the space of his studying. "I am."

This vulnerability in him isn't new... it shows itself sometimes. Rarely, but truly. She likes to think that it's one of the very things that keep them together against the world – the fact that she's one of the few people in the world he shows his fear to without embarrassment.

However... God, this is the first time it's really (really) drawn a visceral reaction throughout her body and she flushes under the realization that Cal showing this particular weakness is more of a turn on than it's ever been before.

Especially when it has him showing up at her door at one in the morning.

Especially when she's just in an old Duke t-shirt and socks and he's so distracted by his own insecurity that he hasn't even taken the time to notice her legs or her lips or how mussed her hair is from napping on her couch.

He begs her implied support with just an unsure step and slight fidgeting, rolled up notes and papers scrunching in his hand as he clenches his fist. "You are?"

"Your love," she amends quickly, assuredly, as she takes the most recent draft from him and leans a look over it. She inherently smiles at the way he's angrily struck a few lines with pen and nipped words here or there. The margins are full of self deprecating commentary and one note to himself has her laughing despite his watching.

She can't help this feeling.

That this moment is entirely unscripted, unwritten between them. Entirely new.

That she's given him a dialogue he may not be prepared to finish.

"The glorious manifestation of, yeah. Entirely so." His agreement is more than she expects and it has her head lifting from his notes to find his eyes finally chock full of all the usual things she sees when he looks at her. Love and pain and adoration, annoyance and lust. Desperation, desire, loyalty.

Gill shrugs into every one of those feelings, knowing them, knowing her matched responses to them, knowing they're closer to some new ending. Her palm spreads flat to his chest and stills there, heat against fabric. "And you _can_ do this."

"You're sure?" The duality of his hushed question is ridiculously obvious and the both of them are completely aware of its weight between them, especially as his fingertips drag down the front of her shirt and catch the hemline into a fist.

She smiles, nods with her eyes shut and leans into the hands she trusts to finish the story, "I'm absolutely positive."

* * *

Her favorite lines, the absolute best of everything he's written for her (for them), they come as he's dropping his head back on his shoulders and groaning appreciation and adoration into the sweated darkness of her bedroom. He's hard inside her and his shoulders are tensed and she's too busy being drugged by the way one of his hands slowly pushes her hair back from her face to realize that he's curbed her by wrapping the other palm against one thigh and tugging them still.

There's a jut of force in his forearm as he shoves her jaw up, demands the open space of her throat and drags his mouth there. His teeth nick against her briefly, voice cagey, "Need you, Gill."

She smiles a private indulgence as his fingers shift enough to touch on her lips and find it, her head still back as he sucks marks along her throat and licks against their redness. "What's new?"

"All of this. I'd say this is new." Both his hands tingle back down her skin as he nips at her and she's absolutely lost to the sensation of him touching her so stridently. He's making new pathways down her breasts and ribs and she whimpers a sharp surprise, dropping her head forward to his as his hands catch her hips and start their rhythm again. "Christ, you feel so good."

She does, actually. She feels exemplary. She feels full and owned and loved.

She feels like favorite pages, often read and even somewhat battered by adoration.

His hands trace more reverence over her like the turning of a page, "Absolutely stunning."

Not surprisingly, he makes her feel that too.

* * *

He's writing a new chapter along her pelvis, fingertip trailing the sentence that was humming through his head until it's wrapped along her hip.

She realizes it suddenly, when he tucks his hand back to its starting point but lower and she faintly feels something that traces like ' _honesty_ ' against the jut of her pelvic bone and continues on words she can't decipher.

He rubs something out against the crease before her thigh, erases his mistake, and then he's continuing the thought, finishing the silent sentence against the skin of her leg while he distractedly bites lightly and then licks on her stomach.

She catches against the back of his head and writes her own honesty against his scalp, feels his head perk still, breath damp against her pelvis as his finger hovers unmoving.

"Just lemme finish this thought, darling."

She doesn't answer or dare interrupt him further (not when he's touching the nuanced layers of a new chapter onto her skin), just lets her hand fall to his shoulder and flatten there.

She doesn't point out that he'd do better to remember it by using an actual pen, or possibly even paper, or typing something out.

Not when it seems like he's finding the words on her before filtering them to a new order in his head, writing them back on her with a language that's more love than he's previously allowed himself.

Rough drafts weren't meant to be seen by most readers anyhow, right?

So she lets him write nearly an entire (tickling) chapter on her body before he finally groans his mouth wiping on her stomach and settles relaxed and loose between her thighs.

"Sure you're gonna remember all that when you get back to the typewriter?"

"No idea what y'mean." He's licking her skin between words and she shivers uncontrollably. "I was merely on a freckle hunt. An expedition of sorts."

* * *

He groans and twists a lock of hair up in his fingers, watches her slide lower down his chest, "If you think kissin' me silly is gonna get you a dedication then you're - "

"Would you just shut the hell up about it already?" Her eyes lift hooded as she kisses along his lower ribs and he shrugs unhurried amusement. "It's not necessary."

He grins suddenly like a wicked child, impish eyes with crinkled corners and all. "Gettin' one anyhow. All the kissing is unnecessary."

"I can stop."

The broad span of his palm catches the back of her head as she shifts and her smile is rubbed down his stomach as he hugs her close again. His fingers sift in her hair so slowly. "Rather y'didn't."

"It'd better be good." She means any dedication he plans to put on his pages - but she also knows he's in a mood and being childish and surly and chippy at once.

A grunt comes off him that's all smug but affectionate. "Haven't heard any complaints yet."

* * *

She can't blame him for keeping her awake, not really.

Not when it was entirely _her_ idea and it's his bed this time and his house and she's his (finally _his_ ) guest.

Gillian smiles in spite of herself, eyes closed amid the clackety repetition of typewriter keys striking home over and over again. She lets her fingers tease one of his earlobes and he leans into the touch until it tickles, shakes off her fingers and grunts a supposedly annoyed noise.

"M'workin'," the gruff of his voice is more a clearing of his throat after not speaking for hours rather than actual perturbation. He nudges the typewriter closer to her side on the mattress and shifts more of his bare chest and forearms up on the bed to ease the weight of his knees pressing the carpet. "Stop bein' insatiable."

She hums placation and turns her head along his pillow, tracing the shell of his ear as he types something rapidly then pauses, hovering, staring. "You're sexy, Lightman."

He blindly grins over the swimming black of the letters on the paper and she can see a myriad of (mostly self conscious) emotions swath over him before he turns a little smug but embarrassed at once. "I know."

The chippy thickening of his accent had been intentional and she knows, even as he starts typing again, that he isn't finished being himself. She speaks softly as she reaches for his ear again and tugs lightly. "And?"

"And 'bout time you noticed." A contorted pressing of his lips pouts out at her as he lifts his head and she can't keep herself from laughing, can't stop from finding him obnoxiously adorable.

She can't help being utterly in love with him.

It's always been the obvious ending anyhow.


End file.
